1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for measuring the transmittance of a piece of cover glass for a photovoltaic cell, and more particularly, to an apparatus for measuring the transmittance of a piece of cover glass for a photovoltaic cell which can measure an accurate transmittance irrespective of whether or not the cover glass has a pattern and irrespective of the shape of the pattern.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, as a countermeasure to the shortage of energy resources and to environmental pollution, the development of high-efficiency photovoltaic cells is underway on a large scale. A photovoltaic cell is a key device for photovoltaic power generation that directly converts solar energy into electric energy. At present, photovoltaic cells are applied to a variety of fields, including electrical/electronic products, power supplies for houses and buildings and industrial facilities.
Here, a piece of cover glass is used in order to protect a photovoltaic cell from an external environment, such as contamination or impacts. The transmittance of the cover glass may be decisive for the entire efficiency of the photovoltaic cell. Therefore, an enormous amount of research and development is underway in order to increase the transmittance of cover glass. Here, technologies for increasing the transmittance of cover glass may be generally divided into two approaches. The first approach is to form an antireflection (AR) coating on the surface of cover glass, and the second approach is to form a pattern on the surface of cover glass, as shown in FIG. 1, which results in the light-trapping effect.
However, as shown in FIG. 2, since a piece of patterned glass which has a pattern on the surface thereof scatters light, part of the light is not detected by a detector. This makes it difficult to measure the transmittance of patterned glass.
Accordingly, the related art has a problem in that it is almost impossible to obtain an accurate transmittance measurement on patterned glass using a typical spectrometer.
The information disclosed in the Background of the Invention section is only for the enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention, and should not be taken as an acknowledgment or any form of suggestion that this information forms a prior art that would already be known to a person skilled in the art.